Myself, the Azelf
by Ivyvine
Summary: Three ordinary human girls had always argued about which one was coolest: Uxie, Mesprit, or Azelf... until they transformed into them, that is. Part 1 of the Spirit Series
1. Which is Best?

**I originally began writing this story for my sister and finished because it had started to turn out rather interesting. Each part was first posted on my sister's deviantART account, nyraalba.**

* * *

One not-so-typical night, I was having a sleepover with my sister Maddie and her friend Caitlyn Nash, whom everyone called Tiger. Well, not really a sleepover, since the whole point of the thing was to finish this big school project that was due the next day. It wasn't very exciting—some thing about how plants grew with earthworms as opposed to without them—but it counted for fifty percent of our biology grade, and I was in a group with two of the most scatterbrained people on planet Earth. So the sleepover had actually been my idea. Unless you kept them in a closed room free of shiny distractions, there was no way to keep Maddie or Tiger on task.

"Man, I'm so glad we don't have to work with real earthworms," said Maddie. We were laying on the floor in the middle of my room, with all our project papers spread out so we could easily find them.

"I thought it would be fun to use real worms," I said. "What's the point of a worm project with no worms?"

"Geez," said Tiger. "Be quiet so I can finish this. I'm almost done with the results section. I wanna hurry up and finish so I can play Pokémon Battle Revolution."

"I'm playing you first!" said Maddie.

"No, I want to play her first," I cut in. "You got to last time. Besides... Azelf rules!"

"Nuh-uh, Mesprit does," Maddie said, and then we were off, the three of us arguing as usual about which of the three Spirit Pokémon had the coolest power.

Maddie was always for Mesprit, the "Being of Emotion" who taught humans the nobility of suffering and joy. "What's the point of a world without feelings?" she said. "If there weren't emotions, the world would be so booooring."

Tiger stuck up for Uxie, the "Being of Knowledge" who always had its eyes closed as if asleep, but it was actually deep in thought. "Emotions are useless without knowledge. We'd still be knuckle-dragging Neanderthals if it weren't for knowledge."

My favorite Spirit was Azelf, the "Being of Willpower" whose will was so strong, it could manipulate people into either attempting something repeatedly or losing interest in it altogether. "Emotion and knowledge are fine," I said. "But without the will to use them, what good are they? Plus, Azelf's blue."

"What does that have to do with—" Maddie began.

"No, no, she has a point," said Tiger. "Blue is a very cool color."

"Well, we might as well finish this stupid project," I said. "We're not getting very far by arguing about Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf."

They agreed, and we finished the last of the results pages and the conclusion.

Just as I finished writing down the last sentence of our conclusion, my mom opened the door and walked in the room. No one bothers knocking at our house.

"Are you kids almost done? It's nearly midnight," she said. "Go to bed."

"Midnight!" I said. "Man, we're going to be tired tomorrow."

I heard Maddie say, "Wimp," under her breath. Then out loud she protested, "But we didn't get to play Battle Revolution."

"You can play video games tomorrow—_after_ you've turned in your project," said Mom. "But for now, get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a crazy day."

At the time, I did not realize how true those words would turn out to be.


	2. Transformation

When I woke up, the bedside alarm clock said 6:13.

"Uuuuuulf," I groaned. I hated waking up just a couple minutes before the alarm went off. I ended up groggy and cranky for the rest of the morning, and most of the afternoon too.

I sat up in bed, feeling light. That was unusual. Most of the time I had to drag myself heavily out of bed, torn between getting up and pulling the covers back over my head.

When I jumped to the floor, the first thing I noticed was the distance. It wasn't quite right. Did I usually fall this far to the floor? Of course, I was still half-asleep. For all I knew, my exhausted brain was making things up, taking them from the remnants of some dream.

Then, when I went over to the door, I couldn't reach the doorknob. For the first time, I was a bit alarmed. I turned to Maddie and Tiger, who were still asleep in their beds, completely obscured by blankets. At the same instant the alarm went off. And then things started getting really weird.

A groan of "Meeeeeees" came from Maddie's bed, and she sat up.

Only...it wasn't Maddie. It was Mesprit.

I screamed. She screamed back.

"Maddie, you're Mesprit!" I said. Only it came out like "Azelf zelf azelf!" That was weird. Even stranger, Maddie appeared to understand.

"Meeesprit me sprit!" she said. In my head, I translated: "And you're Azelf!"

Figured. At least that explained the distance to the floor and the fact that I couldn't reach the doorknob.

That left Tiger to be Uxie. Sure enough, she sat up in bed, and her yellow eyes were closed; yet somehow she appeared to be looking right at us. And you'll never guess what happened next— she screamed!

"Yuuuuuuuuxieeeeee!"

I didn't need to mentally translate that to know it was pretty much the Uxie equivalent of "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!"

Just as it seemed things couldn't get any worse, there was a knock at the bedroom door.

"Wait a minute," I thought. "No one knocks at our house."

"Are you people killing each other in there or what?" said the person who knocked. "Okay, I'm coming in!"

"Oh, great," I muttered. It was my cousin, Caitlyn (not the same Caitlyn as Tiger), who sometimes rode the bus with us to school because her mom had to go to work real early, like mine. Probably she would take one look at us and have a heart attack.

"Back in bed!" I hissed. "Pull the covers over your heads. Now!"

Maddie seemed about to protest, but did as I said. Tiger was already buried under her comforter.

There would be no climbing up on the bed for me. I was only like a foot tall, and the bed was more than two. My stubby legs just wouldn't cut it. So I hurled myself under the bed just as the door opened.

"You people are lazy," said Caitlyn. "The bus gets here at 7:15 and you're still in bed at 6:25."

"That still gives us fifty minutes, moron," I thought. Caitlyn wasn't that great at math. Then again, she wasn't exactly a genius by most people's standards.

"We just—" I started to say, then clamped my mouth shut. Idiot! If I started talking, all Caitlyn would hear was variations on the word "Azelf." Okay, so maybe she had no idea what an Azelf was, but I wasn't taking any chances.

"Mmmmmm," groaned Maddie. Luckily, she seemed to have picked up on the no-talking idea. She sounded like nothing more than a grumpy kid who'd just woken up.

"Weirdos. Let 'em be late," muttered Caitlyn. She turned and left, closing the door behind her.

"Man, that was close," said Tiger. She floated out of bed and hovered in the air.

Why didn't I think of that? Of course I could fly. I was Azelf, after all. "C'mon, fly," I told myself. But my butt remained planted on the floor. I looked over at Maddie, who wasn't having much success either.

"You're both concentrating too hard," said Tiger. "If you think too much about floating, you won't be able to. You have to just let it happen."

I tried her advice, but nothing happened. " 'Being of Knowledge,' indeed," I thought, but then I felt myself rising and knew she was right. Struggling got you nowhere when it came to being lighter than air.

"Okay, school," I said, once I'd stopped rising. "Something tells me we're not riding the bus today, so how do you propose we get there?"

"Um... fly?" Maddie suggested.

"With this buttload of papers? I don't think so," I said.

"But we're Psychic-type," said Tiger. "Can't we like... you know... lift stuff with our minds and stuff like that?"

That struck me. "Like telekinesis! Good idea," I said. "Okay, so we'll use our psychic powers to carry our homework with us. And... how do we do that?"

Tiger turned thoughtfully to the neat stacks of paper on the floor.

"C'mon, Uxie," I said to her. "Let's see some more of that 'Being of Knowledge' stuff in action."

"Working on it," Tiger replied. "Let's try this." And she opened her eyes.

I was unprepared for the flash of light that came from her. Her eyes glowed brightly enough to illuminate the entire house. I squinted against sharp pinpricks of pain.

"Don't look at her eyes," I said to Maddie. One look at Uxie's eyes was supposed to be enough to wipe out your memory.

Tiger closed her eyes again and seemed to shift light to the stacks of biology homework. The light faded until only the papers glowed. Then they shifted a little and began to float upward.

"Well, that's one problem solved," I said with some relief. "But we can't just show up in class looking like we do. I can just see the headlines—'Mrs. Hawkins's Ninth-Grade Biology Class Drops Dead of Heart Attacks!' "

"What is it with you and heart attacks?" grunted Maddie.

"Hey, you'd think about heart attacks too if two of your favorite teachers in the world had died of them," I snapped. "Now, I have an idea. I'll write a note to school, like Mom does when one of us is sick. I'll 'explain' how all three of us are sick with the flu—that should give us some time to change back before the school district starts getting suspicious. And I'll add that we need our project delivered to Mrs. Hawkins's room by the end of last period."

"That's easier said than done," said Maddie. "How are we supposed to deliver this stuff to the office in the first place?"

"That," I said, "you can leave to me."


	3. Mind Control

"So you're dropping this off for a friend," said the lady in the attendance office. She looked up suspiciously at the kid I'd randomly chosen to deliver the biology project. I was actually floating right above this kid's head, but Tiger, Maddie, and I had figured out how to make ourselves invisible. Both the kid and the attendance office lady were oblivious to me.

"That's right," I thought.

"That's right," repeated the kid aloud, the perfect puppet. It had surprised me at first how very easy it was to bend him to my will. Were all people like this? Was _I_ like this? "Well, actually three friends," I made him add.

"Uh-huh," the attendance office lady said coolly. As you can see, she wasn't exactly the most pleasant member of the school staff. "Well, I'll get someone in here to take it for you. You can leave now."

"Phew," I thought. I didn't relish the idea of spending the next thirty minutes convincing this lady I wasn't playing some kind of elaborate prank. Really, she looked like she wouldn't believe anything I told her. You know the type. "Typical school office lady!" I thought scornfully. The office staff could care less what we kids thought. To them, kids were kids were kids, and therefore too reckless to be trusted.

"Thank you," I told the lady through the kid, and left in a hurry, mentally tugging him along behind me.

* * *

"That was easy enough," I told Maddie and Tiger once I'd escaped the attendance office and released my hold on the kid's mind. They'd been waiting for me in the hallway, invisibly, of course. We'd gone outside to speak so as not to risk being heard. "Now that the project's been taken care of, are we just going back to the house for the rest of the day?" I asked them.

"What, so soon?" said Tiger.

"Yeah, let's have some fun first!" Maddie said.

I rolled my eyes. Those two! They were acting as if we were on some kind of vacation! "Am I the only one who is paying attention to one very important detail?"

"What detail?" asked Maddie.

"The detail that we have _no idea_ how to change back into humans! _That's _what detail!Sheesh, am I the only responsible one around here?"

For once, Maddie and Tiger fell into a blessed silence. It lasted long enough for me to think about this whole thing a bit more thoroughly.

"Well..." I began. "I don't guess there's much we can do at this point. I mean, what are we going to do, anyway? Go home, float around a while and hope some magical thing happens that changes us back? The way our luck's been running, that won't happen in a million years. No, I think it's best if we stay away from home for a while. Just long enough to try and figure things out."

"YES!" said Tiger. "So can we go to the cafeteria and have some fun?"

"It depends on what you mean by 'fun.' "

"Oh, listen to you," said Maddie. She did an imitation of me. " 'Fun? What is this 'fun' you speak of?' Come on! Lighten up a bit, will you? All work and no play makes Adrienne a dull Azelf."

"Whatever, just don't get too comfortable," I snapped. "Unlike you, I care about becoming human again."

"Oh, tell me these powers we have aren't awesome!" said Maddie. "You know you want to keep them, even if it's for just a little while."

She'd stabbed me right in my Achilles' heel. "Yeah, our powers _are_ pretty darn cool," I admitted. "And believe it or not, I do believe in having fun, as long as it's within reason."

"Then let's go!" said Maddie.

"To the cafeteria!" Tiger said. "And I know just how to have fun there," she added. "There's a certain Rachel Foreman I'd like to introduce to our new powers."

The mere mention of the name made anger boil up inside me. Rachel Foreman was the captain of the cheerleading squad, not to mention the most obnoxious, self-centered human I've ever had the displeasure of knowing. God only knows why or how anyone could have liked her enough to consider her a friend, but she was one of the most popular kids in the ninth-grade class. Rachel often made a point of ridiculing me in front of her masses of friends: me and my passion for learning; my quiet, one-friend-is-enough personality—not to mention the fact that I loved Pokémon and wasn't afraid to show it. "Well, guess what, princess?" I thought wickedly. "You're about to get your preppy, size 4 butt kicked by a Pokémon, and I'm going to enjoy every second of it."

* * *

We found her in the fast food line, ordering a salad. "Like she needs to be any thinner!" I thought scornfully. What a poser.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," I murmured to Tiger and Maddie. I whispered my plan, and their grins grew by the second. By the time I finished, they were struggling not to burst out laughing.

"You got all that?" I asked, and they nodded. Then I initiated the first part of the plan.

Down below, a curious phenomenon was beginning to take place. Rachel, armed with a cup of ranch dressing, was prancing around like a four-year-old who's just found out he gets to go to Disneyland for the summer. "SCHBLEGEN BLORGEN BLARGEN! Cheesy cheese muffins for you!" she screeched... or rather, I made her screech. She then proceeded to dump the salad dressing over the head of a lunch monitor.

"Rach, what are you _doing_?" said one of her friends in horror as the lunch monitor, red-faced, wiped off the ranch dressing as best she could and demanded to see Rachel's ID. See, for some reason the cheerleaders think the rule "Always Have Your ID Visible" doesn't apply to them.

For the moment, I released my hold on Rachel. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, Mrs. Culver... so sorry... I don't know what happened, I'm so sorry," she stuttered lamely as she was dragged away to the principal's office.

Then I took control again. "UNHAND ME, THOU BOORISH LOUT OF A WOMAN!" she yelled. At this point, everyone in the cafeteria had turned to look. Some were laughing, and others engaged in low-voiced conversations about this downright crazy situation. Rachel, queen of popular, bane of the common nerd, reduced to screaming unintelligibly and dumping food condiments on a teacher's head? This, indeed, was quite a spectacle.

Then I prepared to put the icing on the cake. "Before I go, I would like to make an announcement," I made her say loudly, to make sure she had the students' undivided attention. She jumped up onto a table, evidently ignoring the protests of the gathering school staff members.

"I would like to proclaim my passionate love for Phillip Kovaleski."

At this, the entire student body erupted into raucous laughter. Phillip Kovaleski was a jerk, and an unpopular one at that. He was the perfect choice to completely humiliate Rachel.

I snapped my mental connection to Rachel for good and cracked up with Maddie and Tiger. There was no danger of being discovered, since our laughs blended with everyone else's. Rachel cried and cried and blubbered something desperately to the teachers who were trying to escort her to the office.

"This has been a fun day," I said as our laughter subsided. "Still, I think we should wipe everyone's memory of this. Not even Rachel Foreman deserves the misery ahead of her."

Maddie and Tiger nodded in agreement. "I'll do it," Tiger said. "I think I can only do it every once in a while, though, because memory erasing takes a ton of energy. Still, we can't let Rachel suffer for something we caused. We're not _that_ evil."

She made herself flash into visibility. "YUUUUUUXIEEEE!" she screeched, and everyone in the cafeteria looked up at her. Her eyes opened, and Maddie and I closed ours against the memory-wiping blaze of light that filled the room.


	4. Azelf Itself

"I can't do it."

Alarmed, I turned to Tiger, who had just erased the memory of every human in the cafeteria. "What? Can't do what?"

"I can't turn invisible! Just opening my eyes took up so much energy that I can't do anything that uses up psychic power. And I think... I think I'm starting to..."

Maddie and I watched, dumbstruck with horror, as Tiger started sinking toward the ground. Had the memory-wiping stare taken up so much power that she couldn't even levitate—a basic ability of Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf?

Meanwhile, kids and lunch monitors surrounding us were looking around in confusion, as if unsure of where they were. Many were in full panic mode, half-walking, half-running around aimlessly in a desperate attempt to make sense of the hole in their memories.

"Oh, please don't anybody look in our direction," I prayed silently. Tiger was tiny in her Uxie form, but if someone noticed her—even if it was just one person—well, we were done for. Who knew how long it would be before Tiger could cast another memory wipe? And I couldn't possibly control all these people at once. One person at a time was easy enough, but a fourth of the whole student body? Not even Azelf was capable of such a feat. But maybe... just maybe...

"Maddie, calm these people down!" I hissed to her. "I can't take over this many human bodies at once, but I'm sure you can at least influence their emotions enough to make them stop panicking."

"Huh? Oh, right. Good idea." I felt her give a little nod. Even as she made the tiny movement, a sense of calm seemed to flow over the room. Even I could feel it. Do you maybe remember a time when you were a little kid and got separated from your parents in the grocery store? You stumbled around, certain that every adult you saw just _had_ be Mom or Dad, and ran off in renewed terror when your instincts proved wrong. Then when you turned the corner and saw them standing there calmly picking out breakfast cereal from a shelf, there came a feeling of incredible relief, like nothing could go wrong ever again. That feeling is not unlike the one that was radiating out from Maddie right now.

The calming effect was so powerful that I felt like I'd been drugged. This had been such a long, insane day... so long... and I thought how wonderful it would be to just lay down and go... to... sleep.

"ADRIENNE!"

The shriek had come from Maddie. She was screeching at me to move, telling me that we had to leave, that we had to leave _now_, but I was too far gone. I felt my eyes closing... closing... and then I was on the ground, and then the world went blank.

* * *

I heard a faint humming noise, and my eyes blinked open.

"Uuuugh, morning already?" I demanded of the bedside alarm clock. No... not the alarm clock. Now I remembered that I hadn't been at home since that morning. Where was I?

"Wherever this is, it's too dark for my liking," I thought glumly.

I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, suddenly alert. Had we been discovered, then? A sudden disturbing thought made me shudder. Were the three of us inside a truck, being hauled off to some kind of laboratory for study?

But no, that couldn't be. I couldn't see a thing in this darkness, but when I groped around a bit, my hands found objects that had the bumpy texture of stone, not the smooth feel of metal.

"Rocks?" I thought, relieved but bewildered at the same time. "What _is_ this place?"

"_Welcome, human."_

The voice bloomed inside my head, unfamiliar but definitely not malicious. Still, I was instantly on my feet. "Who's there?" I called out into the darkness. My voice echoed with surprising loudness; apparently, this room was much bigger than I had guessed.

"_I am the one of whom you have taken form. I am Azelf."_

All at once, the room lit up as if someone had turned on a stadium light. I was in the middle of a huge cave, and in the quiet I thought I could hear the sound of roaring water, far above my head.

Azelf faded into view a few feet in front of me, just at eye level. In the reflection of its big, solemn, tawny yellow eyes, I could see myself—the real me, the _human_ me. I looked down at my hands, my glorious, clumsy human hands, and it occurred to me that I'd never been so happy to see anything in my whole life.

Azelf seemed to sense the questions pounding on my brain. _"You_ _will_ _see_ _your_ _sister and_ _friend_ _soon_ _enough,"_ it said in that strange mind-language, "_but_ _first there is something I must tell you. It may be the only way to save_ _yourself_, _so_ _remember it."_

I stared at Azelf incredulously. "But you're just a Pokémon. You don't really exist—you're just an invention of someone's mind. I'm not even entirely convinced that this whole day wasn't just a dream. It makes no scientific sense."

Azelf's yellow eyes grew hard. _"Was it science that brought you here?" _its voice blasted in my brain. _"Was it science that gave you the power to control others, to take over their minds and bodies? You of all humans should realize that not everything can be explained away by science__—that primitive model of human 'achievement'!"_ Its voice dripped sarcasm as it reprimanded me.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," I said. "Yeah, I know that not everything can be explained easily. Please enlighten me."

The Pokémon nodded. _"Better_," it said. _"What I must tell you is that knowledge, emotion, and willpower are nothing without one another. One cannot exist without the other two."_

I nodded, but inside I was shaking my head. "Willpower is the greatest power of all," I thought. "Control that and you control everything."

Azelf glared at me again for a second, but then its voice became thoughtful.

"_Human," _it said slowly. _"You do not seem to realize what you are thinking. Humans, and indeed any creature with the power of logic, cannot exist without knowledge, emotion, and willpower. Even if only one was missing, what good would the other two be? Knowledge without emotion and willpower is stupidity. Emotion without knowledge and willpower is lack of feeling. And yes, willpower without knowledge and emotion is only weakness."_

I stared at my reflection in the tawny gold eyes.

"_Only when the three of you combine your powers can you hope to return to your human forms," _said Azelf. _"Now, return to the waking world. You are all three in danger."_

The cave walls faded around me as if they were from a dimly remembered painting, and I was left in darkness.


	5. Looming Shadows

I awoke back into my Azelf body. I sat up with a jolt and immediately glanced around for Maddie and Tiger, who were nowhere in sight. I was lying on something crumpled and nasty-smelling. I sat up and saw that I was on top of a pile of trash; I must've been in one of the Dumpsters behind the school building. The germophobic part of my mind shuddered, and I stood up to retreat to a less gross-looking trash pile.

Then I realized that the left side of my body ached. I craned my neck to take a look. My side had been rubbed raw, as if someone had been dragging me across pavement. Groaning, I used the last of my energy to float up and out of the Dumpster.

That's when I saw Maddie and Tiger. They were sandwiched between the Dumpster and the building. "Thank goodness they're safe!" I thought.

But when I looked closer, I saw that something was very wrong with Tiger. ...

The sight made nausea bubble up in my stomach. Tiger had been laid flat on her back. A nasty gash had been opened across her small chest and was oozing bright blood. Maddie was hovering around her desperately fanning her with her tiny hands, but it didn't seem to have any effect. Tiger, meanwhile, was muttering deliriously, whether to herself or to Maddie I couldn't tell.

"Oh, geez," I muttered. "Oh, no. Not Tiger..."

"Adrienne!" gasped Maddie, turning to me. "It's no good," she said desperately. "I—I can't..."

"What happened?" I demanded, suddenly furious with myself for having fallen asleep. "Why's she bleeding like that?"

"Some idiot kid in the cafeteria thought it would be funny to grab her by the tails and swing her around," Maddie growled. "The lunch monitors are so useless, they wouldn't intervene, and Tiger hit the corner of a metal... hey, what're you doing?"

I had floated down to Tiger's side and was lifting her off the ground with my little arms. "We can't stay here!" I said. "Pretty soon word will get out that three very weird animals have been seen on the premises of Frank J. Eibod High School. And you know our school district has never been known for a lack of annoying, nosy investigations. I'm sure you remember the 'gang-related green backpack' incident? If we stay here, you can bet we'll be captured and trucked off to a biology lab within the next, oh, two days, three days tops. And what about Tiger? She's in no condition to be experimented on! I mean, what if she..."

I trailed off, unable to finish. An uncomfortable silence settled over the two of us. Tiger continued to babble.

"When I fell asleep," I began reluctantly, "Azelf came and talked to me in a dream. Only it wasn't like a dream. It was real and... and I was human again. Azelf told me that to change back, we have to put our powers together."

Maddie looked at me strangely. "Sure you weren't just hallucinating or something?" she asked. "I mean, come on—a _Pokémon_ came to you in a dream?"

"Look, I know it sounds, well..."

"Completely insane?" she said.

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Are you saying we're supposed to rely on some stupid dream to get us through this? Tiger's hurt _bad_, Adrienne! She might die!"

"Which is exactly why we have to try," I said quietly. "Azelf said it was the only way to become human again. We have to work together as a team."

The whole time we'd been speaking, Tiger had been keeping up a steady stream of meaningless babble. Maddie glanced at her worriedly. She sighed. "This had better work," she said.

We focused our powers to try to revive Tiger. I sent willpower to Maddie, who in turn sent out waves of calming energy. This would lower Tiger's heart rate to normal, slowing the loss of blood. I noticed that Maddie's power was, in fact, greatly magnified when I added my power to hers. It took all of my willpower to keep from falling asleep again. Luckily, though, I was prepared for the sleep-inducing effect, and there was no greater source of willpower than Azelf.

"Now I'm going to try to heal that cut," I told Maddie quickly. "Maybe I can will her blood cells into working fast enough to form a clot."

I pictured Tiger's blood cells in my mind and willed them to go to work. "Please," I thought. "Please work. Oh, geez, please don't let her die. ..."

Miraculously, the line of blood above the gash began to darken, slowly at first, then with increasing speed. Finally the flow of blood stopped. At least, it _seemed_ to have stopped: We watched her closely for the next several minutes until we were quite sure that no new blood was appearing. Finally, relieved to the point of exhaustion, Maddie and I rummaged through the Dumpster to look for a piece of cloth to wipe away the blood. I found one in the form of a dirty old kitchen rag.

"_Eeeeeewww,"_ I groaned as I wiped Tiger up with the disgusting rag. "If I were a doctor already, I'd probably lose my medical license for this. Population-wise, this rag must be the germ equivalent of New York City."

"You're probably right. Now get that thing off of her. Don't want to get any of those germs into her blood."

I rolled my eyes. "The cut is sealed, smart one. Germs can't get into a closed cut."

"Yeah? Well, yesterday I didn't think it was possible to turn into a Pokémon, and just look at me now."

I raised my eyebrows. "Touché."

Maddie grinned.

"Hey, you guys. What happened?"

I think Maddie and I jumped about three feet in the air.

Tiger sat up and grinned weakly at us. "Heh heh. Scared you, huh?"

"TIGER!" Maddie and I squealed.

"Man, you had me scared!" I said. "I wasn't sure if we would be able to revive you."

"Yeah," said Maddie. "All you need to know is that some jerk in the cafeteria took you for a swing and that you got hurt in the process. But don't worry, you'll be fine."

Tiger laughed. "Well, I guess I'm just happy to be alive." Then she frowned. "Did you guys see anything a few minutes ago?"

We stared at her. "Like what?" I asked.

Her eyes narrowed. "You mean you didn't see when Uxie came and started talking to me?!"

So, Tiger had had a vision of her Spirit Pokémon too. I gave Maddie a significant look. She nodded.

"The same thing happened to me, only it was Azelf," I told Tiger. "Azelf said we were in some kind of danger, but it never gave me any specifics. All it told me was that the three of us have to—"

"Work together with our powers," said Tiger. "Yeah. Uxie said the same stuff to me. But what I want to know is, what's this danger Uxie was talking about? How are we supposed to prepare for a danger that we don't even know about?"

"I guess we'll find out," I said grimly.

"Um, you guys, we should probably get out of here," Maddie put in. She sounded a little irritated, as if she felt left out from the conversation because she hadn't been visited by Mesprit. I can't say I blamed her.

"Yeah," I said, mostly for her benefit. "Yeah, you're right. Let's go."

We rose into the air and turned the corner into a dark alleyway between the main school building and the portable.

"So what are we going to do now?" asked Maddie.

"We'll have to come up with some kind of strategy to deal with the danger, whatever it is," I said. "Most likely it'll be biologists or something, trying to capture us so they can do autopsies on our bodies." I gave an involuntary shudder at the thought.

"Do we have to do it in this creepy alley, though?" Tiger wondered aloud.

"Not really," I said. "I just thought it would be a good place to hide while we made plans."

"Well, it's really dark and really creepy," said Maddie. "Can we please go somewhere else?"

I shrugged. "Sure. Why not? I don't want anything blocking your concentration. Like Azelf said, we all have to work together if we're ever going to be human again."

So we turned to leave. And then, quite suddenly, the identity of the mysterious danger became clear—or at least much more obvious.

The dark edges of the alley's shadows thickened and spread rapidly up the sides of the two buildings. As if made of liquid rubber, the shadows came together over our heads, forming a canopy that enveloped us in total darkness. No escape in sight. No light to see an enemy with.

We were trapped. And we were helpless.


	6. Inners and Endings

I'd never been more scared in my life.

"Adrienne," Maddie said in a strangled squeak. "What do we do?"

Minutes passed, but my eyes did not adjust to the darkness. It was all-consuming. It was as if there would never be light again. Panic fear swelled in my chest, threatening to make it burst open.

My thoughts went along the lines of "No light, no light, where are we, where's the sky, where's anything?!"

"I don't know," I croaked to Maddie. "I don't know what this is."

_Oh, but you do._

"Who said that?!" I snapped. Terror was making me angry.

"Said what?" I heard Tiger say.

"What?" Maddie echoed.

"Who are you?" I demanded. Tiger and Maddie must have thought I'd gone crazy, but the voice answered me.

_Silly. I'm you._

All at once the world was filled with light, and I saw... me. The real me, the human me, etched in perfect detail. Startled, I looked around but could see nothing else.

I was alone with... myself. Just me and this strange mental incarnation of me, and everything else was blotted out by light.

It was an extremely weird feeling.

"You don't really want to give up that Azelf body," said Inner-Adrienne. "You don't want to give up that power."

"What? Are you crazy? I mean, am _I_ crazy?" But at once I knew it was true.

And finally I understood what we were up against.

We all hide our darkest desires deep inside our minds, and hope they stay hidden there forever. It's the only way human beings are able to stay human instead of becoming the very things we fear. And right now my worst fear... and darkest desire... was staring me in the face.

I wanted power.

And not just any power. The power to seize minds, make mindless puppets out of anyone I wished.

This morbid desire, I knew, arose from all the mess I'd gotten from other kids throughout the years. Ridicule. Bullying. It's astonishing sometimes, how cruel kids can be to each other. And I hated it. I wanted it to stop, forever and ever. But there was an undeniable dark side to that desire. I wanted _revenge_!

See, the whole thing with Rachel Foreman in the cafeteria had thrilled me. As far as I saw it, she had been getting what was coming to her. It was only guilt that made me ask Tiger to wipe out everyone's memories.

But...

But at my very core, I just was not that type of person. Deep down, my heart wouldn't let me do anything truly bad. And failing to understand that was Inner-Adrienne's biggest weakness.

"You want Azelf's power, Adrienne," the silky voice repeated.

I steeled myself and glared into her eyes.

"No! No, I DON'T want it! Especially not if you're part of the equation! I REFUSE!" _I_ _refuse_ was my favorite thing to say when faced with something I absolutely _would_ _not_ do.

Inner-Adrienne was not giving up so easily, though. An unhappy smile formed on her face. Calmly, without raising her voice, she said, "You were always such a martyr, weren't you, dear Adrienne?" She gave a short, humorless laugh. "Goody-goody Adrienne. Pathetic. Now, listen up. If you will not cooperate willfully, then I will just drain the willpower from you. Drop, by drop, by drop."

I gulped involuntarily. My mouth felt as dry as sun-baked sand. But there was no way I was about to let Inner-Adrienne get the best of me.

There was _no_ _way_!

"Shut UUUUUUUUUUUP!" I shrieked, charging her head-on. With Azelf's psychic power, I tried to form a kind of mental spike. To my surprise, the spike actually took on a physical shape and whirred like a drill in front of me. Whatever this place was, it seemed that things that usually only existed in the mind could become real here.

"Take that, stupid fake me!" I shouted, driving the mental spike into Inner-Adrienne's gut. She yelled out a few choice words that I'd rather not write down here. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't this.

Any triumph I felt was immediately washed away when Inner-Adrienne's fingers wrapped around my tiny body and squeezed tight.

"No!" my mind cried out, and I tried to form another mental spike, but it just wouldn't come. The last attack had left me weaker than I'd hoped.

And there was something else...

"I told you," said Inner-Adrienne. "You're going to do what I say. You don't have a choice." Her eyes were like blue steel, icy cold. And as they stared into my pale yellow Azelf eyes, I could feel all the fight in me slip, slip, slipping away...

My will was nothing compared to the cruel desire of this monster that took on my appearance. I knew I was losing, and I couldn't do anything about it. I closed my eyes and waited for this evil, this darkness that had hidden inside me for so long, to engulf my heart and change me forever.

"NO WAY!"

My eyes snapped open again. I craned my neck to see who was coming.

Maddie and Tiger were flying straight for Inner-Adrienne. I could hardly believe my own eyes, but they both appeared unharmed. They slammed into Inner-Adrienne with enough force to jar me free of her grasp and send her careening several yards away with an expression of mingled fury and surprise.

"You guys!" I said weakly.

And fell to the ground.

Really, there wasn't anything in this world of light that could be called a "ground" except for some odd force that seemed to keep me from falling past a certain point. But I had fallen nonetheless. I didn't even have enough willpower left to fly.

"Let's get out of here," said Maddie. Her voice sounded weirdly hollow, as if she were not in a terrible hurry, but I could tell that she meant what she said.

"I agree," said Tiger. "That other _me_ is starting to freak me out. Let's leave before she and the other Maddie"— she shuddered—"catch up."

"Come on," said Maddie in that same monotone. She glanced over at Inner-Adrienne, who looked a little dazed but was now rushing madly in our direction.

"Fly!" I commanded myself, but my body wouldn't obey. Without the will to do so much as move, I was doomed. "My willpower," I whimpered to Maddie and Tiger. "Inner-Adrienne drained it and now I can't even move like two inches. Help me!"

They lifted me up by the arms and we flew clear just as Inner-Adrienne reached us. She shrieked with rage, sounding like some crazed jungle cat. But no matter how high she jumped, we were safely out of reach.

"Yes!" Tiger breathed her relief.

Relief was short-lived.

"What's wrong, Adrienne? Having a hard time?" a voice asked condescendingly.

It was Maddie's voice, but not the real Maddie, the Mesprit who was helping to carry me. It was colder, more bitter somehow.

The human version of Maddie appeared from the light. Human Tiger followed close behind. Both looked like they belonged in a maximum-security prison—or at least an institution. That could only mean one thing.

"Oh, man, not an Inner-Maddie and Inner-Tiger," I thought. Great! Just what we needed—sociopathic versions of ourselves trying to take over our minds and bodies!

Now I understood why Maddie seemed so apathetic. Inner-Maddie must have drained her emotions! And Tiger...

"I got away before the other Tiger could do too much to my brain," Tiger said, answering my unasked question. "Looks like I'm the lucky one." She smiled sardonically, obviously not feeling at all lucky.

I must've been heavy, because despite Tiger and Maddie's efforts to keep me in the air, we were slowly losing altitude. Each second brought us closer and closer to being captured by our own inner demons.

"You'll have to come down eventually," Inner-Maddie called up in a voice all the more chilling for being so gleeful.

"You can't win," Inner-Tiger added. "Face it, you might as well just give up. The odds are against you by a landslide."

"_The odds are against you by a landslide," _muttered Uxie Tiger in a mocking voice. "Oh, shut up."

"But it's true, isn't it?" said Inner-Adrienne reasonably. "Or..." She smiled again. "Or you could just drop that deadweight. Then at least two of you could get away."

Alarmed, I looked from Mesprit Maddie to Uxie Tiger, who were sharing a questioning look (well, sort of, since Tiger's eyes were closed). Would they really drop me? Maybe I deserved it. I was such a worthless person...

Suddenly, for a split second, Mesprit Maddie's face went totally blank. It was as if she wasn't even there. Then she snapped back to attention and shouted, "NO!"

I stared at her in bewilderment. No what? "No, I'm not going to drop you?" "No, I'm not going to sacrifice myself and Tiger to save your sorry butt?"

"Mesprit," she gasped. "I saw Mesprit. I know what to do. Tiger, we have to share our willpower with Adrienne." Tiger nodded fiercely.

Of course! It was the same thing Azelf had said. If we couldn't make our powers work in harmony, we'd never escape. And even as I felt willpower flooding my body once more, I sent out waves of emotion to Maddie, which at this point was no hard thing to do.

Then I leaped away from Tiger and Maddie and shouted down, "Now you're in for it, jerk-offs!"

The other versions of us shared nervous glances. They hadn't counted on this; that much was clear.

I used Nasty Plot, one of Azelf's signature moves for increasing the potency of its psy-powered attacks. I can tell you this much: Nasty plots involving Inner-Adrienne and things such as, say, a deep lake and cement-block shoes were quite fun to come up with.

"YAAAAAAHHH!" I shrieked. Fresh from my imagination, a deep lake had actually appeared right under their feet, and now they were spluttering and splashing around in desperation, cursing us, the water, and life in general. "Now THIS," I thought, "could get interesting."

"Help me out here, guys," I said aloud to the real Maddie and Tiger. Happily, they obliged.

"Bye-bye! Let's never see each other again," said Maddie, her sense of humor apparently restored. She supplied the cement-block shoes, and down went Inner-Adrienne, -Maddie, and -Tiger, disappearing into the depths of the lake.

Right before she vanished from view, Inner-Adrienne caught my eye. A cold voice flashed into my mind. _This isn't over yet, _she hissed silently. _Don't think you have won._

"Oh, go lick a Feebas," I muttered.

Tiger sealed the lake deep in an impenetrable underground cave created from her own mind. I thought that was a pretty cool idea, and a smart one too. The thought that someone might come along and free the Inners was thoroughly unsettling.

Then, after a few moments of silence, we looked at one another and cracked up laughing. Relief had made us giddy with happiness. We did it! We had worked together and stopped—well, basically the end of the world as we knew it.

After we calmed down, Tiger suddenly asked, "Um, a little problem, guys... How do we get back to the real world?"

Oh, crud. The relief had been so overwhelming that I'd totally forgotten about getting out of this weird mind-world. But just then, three small figures appeared from the whiteness.

"_We are here," _said Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf in a soprano unison that sounded like a single pure voice instead of three._ "You have all done well, and learned what we were sent to teach you. Never forget the lesson, and you will all be ready to face whatever lies ahead."_

We watched in astonishment as their eyes opened wide and glowed with a light so bright and pure that it made the rest of the light-world look dark.

And that was my last memory before the light world blanked out.

* * *

_BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! _

I groaned and reached over to smash my stupid alarm clock.

Wait... my alarm clock? I was back home?!

I stared down at each of my hands. Five fingers, pale skin. My human hands! I jumped out of bed, laughing with delight. I had all of my five feet, six inches back. I was human again!

"YES! OH, MAN, YES!" Maddie had woken up and was dancing around. Even lazy Tiger was bouncing off the walls and had flicked on the light switch. I guess that meant it hadn't all been a dream. Or had it, and we'd all just dreamed the same thing? Did it really matter? Either way, it had happened.

Someone knocked on the bedroom door. Sure enough, it was my cousin Caitlyn. "What are you people _doing_ in here?" she asked.

"Look at my legs! They're not little nubs!" Maddie shouted at her. Caitlyn gave her this kind of sideways look, silently turned around, and left the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

"You people are CRAZY!" she yelled from the other side of the door. We heard her footsteps as she put distance between herself and these three insane kids who were actually happy to get out of bed on a school morning.

We shared a good laugh, but then I thought of something. "What day is this?" I asked.

We heard the flutter of paper and looked down to see our biology project.

"All RIGHT! It's the same morning! Now I don't have to worry about after-school makeup hours," said Tiger.

We laughed again. "But there's one thing we do still have to worry about," I said.

"What's that?" asked Maddie.

"Rachel Foreman," I said, making an awful face. "Now that we don't have amazing superpowers, how're we supposed to get back at her for all the stuff she does to us?"

Maddie shrugged. "Good question." But Tiger had a wicked grin on her face.

"Oh, thanks to Adrienne, I've gotten some ideas," she said. Her smile broadened. "And I can tell you one thing: There's a cup of spoiled ranch dressing in my locker with one Rachel Foreman's name written all over it."

_The End_


End file.
